


Mended

by QuoteMyFoot



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Collection: Purimgifts Day 2, Friendship, Gen, Introspection, Nightmares, Recovery, set during ME2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-23 18:52:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18155720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuoteMyFoot/pseuds/QuoteMyFoot
Summary: After two years assumed dead, Shepard takes some time to find her feet again.





	Mended

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sumi/gifts).



_ The cold seeps into her first, like hundreds of needles eating her from the outside in. She drifts for moments that stretch on the like eternity of space around her, feeling herself about to burst— _

—And Commander Shepard wakes in her bed, whole once more, and  _ burns  _ with the warmth of being alive. She knows she will not be able to sleep again, but there are plenty of things to keep her busy aboard the  _ Normandy.  _

For just a minute, though, she lays in her bed and closes her eyes, remembering how to breathe.

*

Two years isn’t that long a time, but Shepard feels it keenly. It’s like missing a step on a flight of stairs; everything is familiar, but she keeps being tripped up by that gap. Joker’s sarcasm is just a little more cutting from years of isolation, Garrus’s methods just a shade darker, Dr. Chakwas more morose…

It’s not  _ bad.  _ Tali and Liara blossomed into someone stronger and bolder in the time Shepard was dead. It’s—well, it’s simply that things are different. 

Shepard surrounds herself with new people—not to make herself feel better, of course, she’d do whatever a mission of this importance demands—and that makes it easier. New people means new problems, and she’s always been adaptable. Cerberus. An assassin. A  _ tank-grown _ krogan, wonders never cease.

The Collectors are the biggest mystery of it all, but that,  _ that  _ Shepard is confident in solving. If only the investigation into the Reapers had moved on at all in the two years since she died. That shouldn’t be where she feels most comfortable, in the missions and planning and action and theories. She wants to be most at home with her crew, the people she’s depending on, her friends and allies—that has always,  _ always  _ been the kind of ship she wants to run. One that feels like a second family.

But just like Shepard’s face takes time to knit itself together, forming a real crew out of the misfits Cerberus found for her takes time. Time she sometimes feels like she doesn’t have, the reminder of the danger the Reapers pose to them all pressing down on her shoulders, day after day.

Shepard stands straight-backed, and she keeps going.

_ (Drifting, cold, alone, lost…) _

*

Step by step, Shepard rebuilds herself. 

She carves out a space in the galaxy that left her in the past. She shares a drink with the doctor. She sees Joker’s bickering with EDI gradually ease into something softer, less sharp. She reforges bonds with old friends and earns the loyalty of the new. She makes an equilibrium. 

_ The cold seeps into her, she feels herself about to burst— _

_ But none of it can dampen the triumph in her chest as she glimpses the escape pod racing away. Didn’t save everyone. Still saved some. _

_ Commander Shepard dies, and she is proud. _

Shepard opens her eyes, knowing her  _ Normandy  _ is waiting for her.

“You look cheerful this morning, Commander,” Kelly says, as Shepard makes it down to the CIC. “Did you sleep well?”

“Like the dead,” Shepard answers, and grins. 

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a suggestion from the giftee. I still haven't finished ME2 but I've already fallen in love with the Mass Effect characters. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it <3


End file.
